Charita Goshay: This election is about YOU

Wednesday

Aug 27, 2008 at 12:01 AMAug 27, 2008 at 10:10 PM

I don’t care that Barack Obama is the world’s biggest celebrity. Better to be cheered than jeered. It doesn’t bother me that John McCain is 72. We all know people who are half his age and twice as incompetent. None of this stuff is what this election is about.

Charita Goshay

I don’t care that Barack Obama is the world’s biggest celebrity. Better to be cheered than jeered.

It doesn’t bother me that John McCain is 72. We all know people who are half his age and twice as incompetent.

None of this stuff is what this election is about.

No one has said it, but this election isn’t about them — it’s about you.

Food, gas, tuition

It’s about your grocery cart, your gas tank, your kids’ tuition. It’s about your dreams and unspoken aspirations. It’s about your retirement and whether it’s going to be there, and who’s going to pay for your parents’ care when they no longer can care for themselves.

This election is not about what someone did or failed to do in the 1970s, and, news flash — it’s not even about Bill and Hillary.

It’s about your future and this nation’s future, and our role in a rapidly changing world.

It’s about whether the shining city on the hill may be losing its moral authority and, as a consequence, its luster as the embodiment of all that is good and right about the world.

This election is not about race, age, religion, gender, innuendo or fear-mongering. Yet, every four years, such tactics are fished out of the muck, because they work. And because they work, what does that say about us?

Elections are supposed to be about vision and purpose and the honor to be had in serving one’s country, not personal attacks and unbridled accumulation of power.

Who in the trenches understands that it’s about you?

History in real time

As you’ve no doubt heard by now, Obama will deliver his acceptance speech Thursday, the 45th anniversary of the Rev. Martin Luther King’s historic “I Have A Dream” speech.

When King stood on the steps on the Lincoln Memorial in the nation’s capital that sultry afternoon in 1963, most blacks in the Deep South were unable to vote. A black presidential candidate wasn’t even within the realm of fantasy.

Through literacy tests, poll taxes and abject fear, their attempts to exercise their voting rights were sabotaged and impeded. Those who insisted paid a painful price. They were harassed and attacked by homegrown terrorists who trampled upon the Constitution.

Many more died without ever trying.

Thursday’s speech is not just a political event. It is a fitting addendum to those lives that were stunted and shortchanged by hatred. Regardless of how you may feel about Obama, King or even me, the rest of the world will look on in wonder at how far we’ve come as a nation. And even if you’d rather cut off your arm than vote for Obama, American history will be made Thursday night.